Brea Grant on the incredible one-two punch of ’12 Hour Shift’ and ‘Lucky’ [Fantasia]

Brea Grant is poised to have an incredible year. With a wealth of acting credits including a beloved run on Heroes and roles in films as diverse as Pitch Perfect 2 and 2019’s creature feature, After Midnight, Grant has two long-awaited projects finally seeing the light of day this year with 12 Hour Shift and Lucky.

Set in 1999 during a double shift at an Arkansas hospital, 12 Hour Shift (written and directed by Grant) stars Angela Bettis as a drug-addicted nurse involved in an organ theft scheme that goes awry when her partner (Chloe Farnworth) loses a package headed to a crime boss (played by wrestling legend Mick Foley). An incisive black comedy about desperate small-town characters at the end of their collective ropes, the film also stars David Arquette as a hospitalized thug and even features an unexpected musical sequence, resulting in one of the most surprising and unpredictable films of the year.

Originally slated to premiere at this year’s SXSW before the festival was called off due to the coronavirus, Lucky is a far darker film. Directed by Natasha Kermani, Grant wrote the film and stars as May, a woman who suddenly begins to be assaulted by a violent masked intruder in her home every night. Her boyfriend shrugs it off as something that simply happens all the time, and May begins to realize that she will have to go on the offensive to deal with this attacker on her own. A unique and haunting examination of the abuse and fear women often have to contend with on a daily basis, Lucky is a timely and important horror film that never provides any easy answers.

If that wasn’t already an extremely full plate, Grant also hosts the book podcast Reading Glasses (with Mallory O’Meara) and will be releasing Mary this October, a YA graphic novel about a doctor who begins treating monsters and also just happens to be the descendant of Mary Shelley.

We caught up with Brea from Bulgaria, where she was wrapping up directing a block of episodes for the CW sci-fi show Pandora, to discuss the antiheroes at the core of 12 Hour Shift and Lucky, why you should never over-explain horror, the books that pair best with both her new films, and much more.

12 Hour Shift and Lucky are screening at the virtual Fantasia Film Festival. 12 Hour Shift screens on August 27 at 11:30 PM, while Lucky screens the following night at 11:00 PM. Tickets are available here (the festival is geo-blocked to Canadian audiences only). 12 Hour Shift will be released in the U.S. on October 2^nd, while Lucky will be available to stream via Shudder in 2021.

12 Hour Shift

Bad Feeling Magazine: I read that 12 Hour Shift was inspired by growing up in East Texas, and urban legends that you would hear back then. What was it about growing up there that led to this film?

Brea Grant: I wanted to write something that reminded me of home and growing up. It’s set in the ‘90s, I was a teenager in the ‘90s. And I think it took me a long time to realize how influential being from Texas, being from a very small town and growing up in the ‘90s in this town, was on me as a person. And so part of me was trying to capture that a little bit and put people in that I knew growing up, obviously some exaggerated versions of them. [Laughs] Small towns are such weird little places because you kind of know everyone a little bit. And the people can be such weirdos in the best way possible, you know? [Laughs] I feel like I have such amazing stories from when I was growing up that someone from a larger city may not have because I just know all of the rumors and the gossip and the weird stuff that happens.

Do you think was the ‘90s setting important for that as well? How would this story have changed if it was set it the modern-day?

I think the characters themselves are very ‘90s. I think people were a little more brash then. I think, less apologetic. Also, it’s the beginning of the opioid epidemic, which plays out with the main character, Mandy, and communication was harder. This is a heist film, in many ways, and a lot of the problems happen because these people can’t talk to each other. Whereas now, I think we would just be texting. So there’s that.

There is an antihero at the heart of both 12 Hour Shift and Lucky – what interested you about that?

I don’t see female antiheroes very often. I love an antihero movie. There’s very many to point to, especially in the action film world, in the horror genre in particular, heist movies, things like that. You have these kind of unlikable guys, but we’re rooting for them to survive the heist, or, you know, rescue the girl or whatever, but we don’t see it very often with women. So it was one of my major goals when writing 12 Hour Shift, in particular, to write a sort of unlikable female protagonist. And to Angela Betis’ credit, she was on board from the beginning. And Natasha Kermani, when she read Lucky, she was on board as well. And it can be a hard thing to sell.

I think I just I could talk about this forever, but I think we’re putting women into leads more, which is fantastic. But until we show women with flaws as our leads, I think we’re doing a bit of a disservice to those leads. Because I think complicated women are interesting to watch, just as we’ve had complicated men for as long as we’ve been making movies. I mean, Citizen Kane, you know, a fantastic movie. I love Citizen Kane, but we don’t often see these kinds of women with the same kinds of flaws.

Angela’s performance is incredible — what was the process of working together on her character like? There’s so much nuance in her performance.

So much, right? It is so good. She’s so subtle, and interesting, and has just a really good take on the character. And that’s just from years of acting and being in the industry. I think it’s very hard for a person who hasn’t been doing this for 20 some odd years to be able to pull something like that off. We met about the script before she came on board and she said, “It’s a dark comedy, right? It’s supposed to be funny.” And I said, “Yes, it’s supposed to be funny.” And then she was like, “Oh, cool.” And then she seemed like she liked it. [Laughs] And she stays so grounded, which I really appreciate because all the other characters are obviously so big and so wild. So I think her performance keeps the movie grounded throughout, drives it forward in a really fascinating and great way. So that way the other characters could be as wacky as they wanted to be.

How did David Arquette come aboard as a producer and for his small but memorable role?

Yeah, so HCT.media are my producers and they have been friends with the Arquettes for a while and looking for something to do with the Arquettes, they had worked with them before I believe. I thought the character of this convict that’s loose in the hospital was just such a cool, weird character to come in and add his own spin. And I needed someone recognizable for that role, I felt like, so that you’d see him, remember him, and be concerned about him for the entire movie. Whether or not he’s going to come back and make everybody’s life hard or kill somebody.

Did he bring Mick Foley in through his wrestling connections?

Yeah, they said, “Do you want another wrestler in the movie?” I don’t know that many wrestlers so Mick Foley was one that I knew, he flew in for one day, he was so nice. And he signed books for people when he got there. Somehow, everyone in Jonesboro, Arkansas, found out that he was on set, so people just kept showing up with stuff for him to sign. [Laughs] You know, you’re shooting these indie movies and you want every role to be really important, right? You want them to all have like, someone amazing. And I feel like I got really lucky because every role feels really different. And obviously, we’ve got some really amazing, cool famous people for even the smaller roles, which is cool.

I have to ask you about the musical sequence in this film, which I did not see coming at all. There are lots of tonal shifts in the movie as it is, but obviously that really stands out. What inspired you to put a sequence like that in the middle of the movie?

I love musicals, that’s part of it! I also think in my first movie, I felt like it played it safe. And in this movie, I wanted it to be bonkers. I feel like I gravitate towards that kind of stuff. I love surprising moments in a movie. And we had this weird chapel that was actually in the hospital. Originally, I was hoping to put a ’90s song over this montage. And I contacted a bunch of ’90s bands and we couldn’t afford any of the songs. [Laughs] So, we had this weird chapel and we kept trying to think of other things we could put in the chapel. And at some point, I realized it would be really cool to just have people sing and we had Tara Perry and Tommy Hobson, who were both singers and dancers on a children’s show for years, that’s how they knew each other. And so I knew I had these amazing singers right on set with me. I think it’s very fun. And when you’re working on a low-budget movie, I think you can do something really safe, or you can really take risks that you may not be able to take in a movie that is with a studio or has a huge budget or even in television. You know, I can’t go put a musical number into Pandora unless it’s written. [Laughs] That just seemed like a fun idea for me and my producers are on board for all my weirdo ideas. It’s amazing.

Lucky

What the initial spark of the idea for Lucky?

Yeah, that one is based on my experience of dealing with a stalker and dealing with the court system and people’s reactions after it and sort of realizing that even though it was a super traumatic, awful moment, that it was somewhat universal for women. Every time I would tell someone the story of what was happening, women would go “yeah, yeah,” like they’d all been there. And there’s something about that, that kind of helped me work through it. I think writing the script helped me work through it a lot as well. But yeah, personal stories.

When you were shopping the film to different studios or producers at first, what was the feedback that you were getting from them? Was it that they wanted more of a clear-cut explanation in the film?

Yeah, a clear-cut answer, a clear-cut reason for why this woman was being attacked. Or a clear-cut villain. So, the Freddy Krueger backstory was something that was asked of me at one point, and then one production company that I got really close to making it with, wanted a sexual assault scene, and I didn’t feel like that was needed. So, it was in a lot of places. Some of them were super —  I don’t mean to disparage, because some of them had really good ideas. But I felt like Epic immediately got it, that I was going for something weirder than that, something more surrealist, and something more from the protagonist’s point of view.

When they over-explain things in horror movies, I often lose interest immediately.

Yeah, the scene where they go to the library and they’re like, looking through old microfiche or something. [Laughs] “We found this old doll that’s been here for 45 years!”

It’s much more intense and visceral because you don’t really get that here.

Yeah, that was the goal. It’s very much May’s story. It’s her story. It’s from her point of view. So things are a bit, you know, they’re fucked up from her point of view and what would be fucked up to her and how this nightmare would play out for her.

Can you talk about the film as an allegory for gaslighting? When May first has the conversation with her husband about the intruder, he shrugs it off as something that happens all the time.

I wanted it to be that she has entered this different universe, in which it is normal for her to be attacked every night in her house, that is the reality of the world. It’s just that her husband finds it normal, just in the same way that a lot of things have gotten normalized, in a horrible way. I mean, things that have come to light lately, like that violence against black people by the cops has become normalized, right? And violence against women has been normalized for a very long time. And I think, obviously, it’s an allegory for that, it’s that but to the nth degree.

People who listen to your podcast know that you’re a huge reader; can you think of a book, either fiction or non-fiction, that would pair well with each movie?

Ah, wow. No one’s asked me this. For 12 hour Shift, there’s a book called A Thousand Naked Strangers by Kevin Hazzard, and it’s the memoir of an EMT. And I got a lot out of that, just because it’s crazy. Being an EMT is wild. [Laughs] Imagine you get paid less than a Starbucks worker, you’re the first call for everything, and the training is actually quite short. So, you’re thrown into this crazy situation, and it just made me realize how we don’t properly prepare or pay or compensate our healthcare professionals. I think it’s something we’ve all realized during COVID. But when making this movie, I read this book and felt like it was really inspiring.

For Lucky, there’s a book called The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher. It’s so good, and it has some surrealist weird stuff. It’s also kind of like, a woman against this weird thing that’s happening alone. She’s obviously in the woods and doing other things. But I think there are some parallels as far as that. I do think that protagonist is a lot more likeable than May. But yeah, I love that book, and I can’t recommend it enough.

12 Hour Shift and Lucky are screening at the virtual Fantasia Film Festival. 12 Hour Shift screens on August 27 at 11:30 PM, while Lucky screens the following night at 11:00 PM. Tickets are available here (the festival is geo-blocked to Canadian audiences only). 12 Hour Shift will be released in the U.S. on October 2^nd, while Lucky will be available to stream via Shudder in 2021.